Rabbi Held Captive For 5 Years In 'Purification' Ritual

Forced to sleep on a dirty mattress, drink only water and eat stale bread.

5 arrested on suspicion of holding rabbi captive for 3 years
Rabbi of non-profit organization says was 'exiled' to Tiberias, held there against his will; staffers say he asked to be cured from mysterious disease through solitary prayer and mortification
Tova Dadon, Ynet

Five residents of the Tlamim community in southern Israel were arrested Monday on suspicion of kidnapping and extorting Rabbi Nir Ben-Artzi, head of the "Talmei Geula" non-profit organization.
 
The men are accused of holding the rabbi against his will in Tiberias for three years.
 
The National Fraud Unit's southern district launched a covert investigation into the matter three months ago, after Rabbi Ben-Artzi had returned to his Tlamim home; during which, according to investigators, "credible" evidence was gathered.
 
The rabbi told police he was "exiled" from Tlamim to Tiberias by a number of "Talmei Geula" staffers as a "personal sacrifice to Israel".
 
The rabbi told police that while in captivity he slept on a dirty mattress, drank only water and ate stale bread.
 
"I wanted to see my wife and children, but they would not release me," he said after returning home. "Initially I thought it was all being done for the good of the Israeli nation, which is in dire straits, and that I was to pray and mortify myself for the nation. But it was unbearable."
 
"Talmei Geula" workers said Rabbi Ben-Artzi was suffering from a mysterious disease and asked to be cured through solitary prayer and asceticism. They claimed to be in possession of a signed document in which the rabbi allegedly admitted to asking to be "purified" after committing "illicit acts" while serving as the organization's rabbi.  
 
Ben-Artzi told police he was forced to sign incriminating documents as a condition of his release.
 
The rabbi was a tractor driver from Gush Katif until 13 years ago, when he began to claim to have supernatural powers. He later became rabbi of the Tlamim community.

[Hat Tip: Joel Katz.]

Comments

[Bob C.]

The sad state of Hareidi Jewry where they turn to Gnostic rites and rituals. I don't recall this happening in previous generations (or maybe the stories just didn't get promulgated as widely. What a sick perverted pseudo-religion.

[jacob]

.Sephardim and new-fangled 'kabbalah" (read mekablim not mekubalim)

[Zalman Alpert]

The rabbi is no rabbi, certainly not a charedi. He functions in the National religious world.
He is also a Messiah want to be. Before reporting about him, his background etc is important to note.

[Michelle]

B"H

Excuse me, Jacob, but most Sephardim are not into Kabbalah. Most of us follow the traditions of Maimonides--i.e. RATIONAL Judaism.

All that Kabbalah crap is the new religion of Madonna and the Haredim, not Sephardim.

M

[Yochanan Lavie]

Apoliges to Aretha Franklin:

Rescue me
They mean to do me harm
Rescue me
They have kabbalah charms
'Coz I'm lonely and I'm Jewish
I need bread and water too

Come on and rescue me
Come on bubbeleh, rescue me
Come on bubbeleh, rescue me
'Coz I need to get outside
Can't you see that I'm Ben-Artzi
Rescue me

Come on, I have superpowers
But you know, they ain't workin' now
'Coz I'm lonely and I'm Jewish
I need air and clean sheets too

Come on and rescue me
Come on bubbeleh rescue me
Come on bubbeleh rescue me
'Coz I need to get outside
Can't you see that I'm crazy

Rescue me
Oh take me in your prayers
Rescue me
I want to go upstairs
'Coz I'm lonely and I'm Jewish
I need purification, too
Come on and rescue me
Come on bubbeleh, take me bubbeleh, hold me bubbeleh, save me bubbeleh
Can't you see that I need you bubbleh
Can't you see that I'm lonely
Rescue me

Come on I'm a stuck schlemiel
Come on bubbeleh and be my moshiach
Cuz I want air cuz I want sun
Can't you see that I'm lonely?
take me bubbeleh
save me bubbeleh
heed me bubbeleh
Can't you see that I'm lonely?

rescue me, rescue me......

[Avis Johnson]

YL HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Yochanan Lavie]

Thanks, AJ.

[Chicago Samson]

Yochanan, absolutely brilliant!

[Yochanan Lavie]

Thanks, CS.

[Hometown Postville]

Are you sure this isn't the guy from Postville who shot the convenience store lady in Decorah a few years back?? If I remember right, he basically got off scot free- they were going to ship him off somewhere to become a rabbi for his "punishment."

[Yochanan Lavie]

HP: If Shmarya covered it, it wasn't "Scott-free." Get it?

[maven]

1. Michelle, you need to learn a little about Jewish history. No sepharadim today follow Maimonides, other than a small group of "Faurites" (and some Yemenites, not Sepharadim, of course)and this is because Sepharadim, by definition, follow Maran (the bet yosef), who was himself an important Kabbalist.

Given that "Kabbala" itself is largely a creation of Spanish and Sepharadi thinkers (which I would take as a source of pride, actually), it is a bit disingenuous to claim that "Sepharadim aren't into Kabbala", what with half the siddur being taken up with kavvanot or quotes from the Zohar (itself a Spanish work) starting from Patach Eliyahu and onwards. Certainly referring to it as "crap" is a bit unpleasant. Perhaps before you post you should follow your dream of "moving to Yesha with rifles" where they may enlighten you a bit about Jewish history and texts.

2. This Ben-Artzi has always been viewed skeptically as a charlatan. I actually still have his "perasha sheet" from just after 9/11, where he, like the radical islamists, claim that 9/11 was a punishment from Gd directly at the wealthy and powerful, etc.

I don't believe he is viewed as a "kabbalist", these kinds of fasting "tikkuns" are done by all sorts of wannabe "tzaddikim". Anyway, he's neither a kabbalist nor hareidi, more of a "holy BT" of an ultra-nationalist sort.

Didn't anyone notice that he was gone for so many years?

[Bilaam's Donkey]

The TRUE Sephardim (i.e., the Spanish-Portuguese and the Judeo-Spanish) are not much into Kabbalah. The Spanish-Portuguese, in particular, quietly think that the Zohar is a pious fraud.
That being said, true Sephardim are a minority amongst people who call themselves Sephardi today. Most so-called "Sephardim" today are really Mizrahim (i.e., their ancestors always lived in North Africa or the Middle East and did not come from Spain or Portugal), or Sephardim who mixed into heavily Mizrahi communities and adopted Mizrahi customs. These Sephardim/Mizrahim are big into Kabbalah.

[Yochanan Lavie]

I like the Spanish/Portugese brand and the Dor Da'im Yemanites. But I like most of Kook and some parts of kabbalistic philosophy- just not the mumbo-jumbo incantations/amulets stuff.

[Neo-Conservaguy]

True story... several years ago I attended Shabbat morning services at a local MO shul. During the service to take out the sefer torah, a confusing verbal melee arose between the visitor leading the service and some (but not all) of the congregants during the singing of the qaballistic poem "Bei Ana Rahetz". The confusion was caused because the visitor and the more "current MO" crowd had adopted the minhag of not repeating words/lines when singing, but the real traditional members - who had spent decades happily repeating certain words/lines because that's how the music was written - sang over the first group. Since I hold the opinion that there is no halachic basis for the minhag of not repeating, I was already gleeful at the assertion of those repeating words/lines.

The best moment, however, was yet to come. To set it up, you should know I consider qaballah a cancer that has infected authentic Judaism in the sense that, rather than being taken for the (legitimate) value as some pretty, spiritual thoughts and poetry, it was instead mostly taken as an authentic "third Torah" by far too many Jewish groups. It is so bad that an ArtScroll Machzor I saw has instructions to never pronounce one of the printed qaballahistic names of God - that's how crazy things have become.

So, imagine my smile when, as the rabbi and the visiting gentleman leading the service walked past me holding the sefer torah, I overhead the following exchange...

Visitor: Did I do something wrong singing that way at the ark?

Rabbi: No, some of the congregation likes to repeat lines in that song. You did fine. As far as I'm concerned, the less qaballah the better.

Delicious.

[maven]

Bilaam's Donkey: False.
The Zohar itself is samekh"tet, as were most of the greats through history (Maran, Chida, Cordovero, and onwards). Show me one Samekh"tet community that doesn't use a kabbalistically based siddur. Want to go one by one through the communities? Turkish (many greats, many texts, mystical singing), Rhodes, North Africans (ie meknes, and particularly now in France), Saloniki, and onwards. Perhaps among communities that have been in the US a long time and can hardly read Hebrew, etc, that may be true, but that's not really proof of anything, and usually, the first moment there is a reawakening, kabbalistic texts are reached for. I personally think this is a good thing, some of our most beautiful texts come from those movements, people reaching for something ineffable and wondrous. This is not "practical kabbala" which nowadays is found only among oddball groups, but the evolving texts of Jewish spirituality in its many guises. The fact that a poetic spirit was kept alive longer among sepharadi and eastern communities than among ashkenazim is due to many influences, but it certainly is good that we have it (the Chida differentiated "chesed" as Sepharadim, and "din" for Ashkenazim in his mystical view of history).

Qabala when spelled with a Q is usually the kind of thing one finds in new age bookstores, a nineteenth century "esotericism" which has little to do with Jewish tradition.

[Yochanan Lavie]

"It is so bad that an ArtScroll Machzor I saw has instructions to never pronounce one of the printed qaballahistic names of God - that's how crazy things have become." quoth Neo.

One of those ineffable names looks mysteriously like Dionysus.

There is a difference between (k)(q)abbalah as speculative theology and the magical/superstitious parts of it. It is also dangerous, IMO, when it gets into discussion about the godhead and the sitra acher- it sounds too un-monotheistic. But I like some rabbis who were also k/qabbalists, and that some of its interpretations can reconcile science with religion via allegorical reading, etc.

[Michael Makovi]

I myself am a Hirschian rationalist, but I was impressed by the nuanced position that seems expressed by Rabbi Marc Angel. In his The Rhythms of Jewish Life: A Sephardic Approach, he emphasizes proper Jewish spirituality, contra rationalist skepticism, but in his The Foundations of Sephardic Spirituality: The Inner Life of the Jews of the Ottoman Empire, he notes that Kabbalah did tend to leave to a mystical and charismatic and anti-rationalist religion without critical and independent thinking.

Rabbi Angel also evinces a nuanced view at http://www.jewishideas.org/min-hamuvhar/religion-and-supe - he upholds Rambam's strictures against superstition, saying that superstition and magic is dangerous to authentic religion, but the reader is not sure whether Rabbi Angel believes Kabbalah is downright false, or simply dangerous.

I'd have to speak to Rabbi Angel further to discover his precise views on Kabbalah.

[maven]

Just don't ask his brother, a militant Faurite, who tried to take over a Seattle Sepharadi kahal by force!

[ML]

Did he put the kahal in captivity for 5 years?